Delayed Reaction: The Angry Birds Movie

The Pitch: Do you know what's almost as profitable as a popular app? A successful animated movie.

I was going to get to it eventually. Might as well be now. This movie has taken a lot of grief (by me among others) for being a lazy studio franchise attempt. I mean, the one thing capable of getting a bigger eye roll than "video game adaptation" is "mobile app adaptation". And that's fair. There's not an actual story to Angry Birds, the game*. Sony is selling this on the name "Angry Birds" because they are too scared to invest any money on something that isn't guaranteed a fan base. I look at it like this though: If there's a good idea for a movie and you have to tie it into some sort of I.P., do it. At least the story gets told that way. That's not the case for Angry Birds though. It's just a forgettable attempt to apply a story to the game. It kind of fits. It's transparently reverse-engineered to end of with birds flinging themselves at a tower. There's no way to pretend that that is where the story took them naturally. The voice cast is...fine, I suppose. Most of the cast is interchangeable. Like, Red could be Bill Hader just as easily as Jason Suidekis. Still, it's an impressive collection of actors who I wouldn't mind seeing together in a live-action project.

I was simply too indifferent to this movie to dislike it. There's some fun Dreamworks-style wordplay that goes right over children's heads and makes adults chuckle. It's energetic and boisterous enough to entertain children too. There's much worst animated films out there.

*I've never played the game, but I assume that's true.


Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend